When big news events pop up, enough information streams in through the (excellent) comments that I can keep informed about context and unfolding situations. When there's no big news, there are interesting links.
The fact that any user can submit a story means that the content is always eclectic, and also that other people are often skeptical of how interesting a post really is. I enjoy having that perspective a lot. It's useful to have other people telling you not to sweat the small stuff – gets rid of one of the problems more "focused" news sites have, which is the groupthink and insistence that This Is Important.
(There's groupthink on MetaFilter, of course, but the minority voices have a specific place to go and speak their mind. Over the years I've lurked/been a member, I've noticed that the tone of the site get better and better as more heated discussions of what's right and what's wrong have guided MeFi in the right direction.)
I run a website http://www.younews.in and I have a personal section where it aggregates from my preferred sites: Hacker News, Reddit /r/science, BBC most shared, NYTimes most shared, The Hindu most read...
I am working on a project where I pull content from various sources and organize it by topics. News is one of the types of content I look at. For example, if you were interested in Xbox news you could follow this topic:
Then there is a "feed" page where it shows the latest for the topics you're following. It is a work in progress, but it gets a little better week by week.
Hacker News, Facebook, and Twitter are probably my primary sources at this point.
Secondarily: Economist (iPad app, I'm a subscriber and try to send the paper editions to /dev/null), Foreign Policy (iPad app, although it sucks), Foreign Affairs (kindle subscription), and news.google.com, particularly in the "editor's picks by publication" area.
I listen to Bloomberg and CNBC in the car (and sometimes BBC News or Fox News). CNBC in particular feels like YouTube comments; it's either masturbatory technical analysis, or such horrible fundamental analysis ("Intel had better be worried because server CPUs have lower margins than mainstream!", which is false -- it's a smaller market but higher revenues) that their technical analysis is better. BBC satellite radio rarely has actual news, though, and while Fox News frequently has programs calling themselves news, it's horribly biased. I miss VOA, AJ-E, or the real BBC international services.
If I end up at NY Times, Tech Crunch, Venture Beat, The Verge, The Atlantic, etc. due to a link on HN, Twitter, or Facebook, I sometimes browse around the site a bit more to see if there are other interesting articles, but rarely if ever go on my own. (The Verge is probably my favorite "new" publication.)
I compulsively read Mac Rumors and semi-compulsively read Digital Photography Review.
I also use Instapaper and periodically go through longform, longreads, etc. to add new stories, but I think I have a backlog of about 800 articles now. I mainly read those on airplanes or when donating blood or otherwise stuck, particularly if it's a public environment where I can't view work related materials.
I still use Google Reader, and have it split into folders for tech, economics (becker-posner!), and survival/military (some journals of people in Syria, journalists working in North Africa, and people in the firearms/tactical equipment industry). I'm terrified that Google might kill Reader someday.
xkcd and what-if are probably the only entertainment publications or comics I read regularly. Next after that might be Steam's daily deals.
I tend to add any interesting-sounding books to my Amazon wishlist, and purchase kindle and audible books pretty freely (a $10 book is far more expensive in time than money, and if it contributes one strong and correct thought, may be worth it)
Quora used to be a great way to get primary sources to talk about timely topics -- e.g. I could ask "why did Slide sell for a relatively small amount to Google" and get Anon User answers from (presumably) Slide early employees, public answers from known Slide people, etc. It seems to have fallen off from that now, due to a change in user population and recognition that Quora is "public" and any answers posted there should be treated as such. More interesting discussion happens on Facebook friends or friends-of-friends posts, now.
I basically stopped reading mailing lists outside of very tactically focused computer security and policy. I used to really enjoy Cypherpunks and some other lists like that, but they're basically dead now -- facebook and twitter have essentially supplanted them.
When big news events pop up, enough information streams in through the (excellent) comments that I can keep informed about context and unfolding situations. When there's no big news, there are interesting links.
The fact that any user can submit a story means that the content is always eclectic, and also that other people are often skeptical of how interesting a post really is. I enjoy having that perspective a lot. It's useful to have other people telling you not to sweat the small stuff – gets rid of one of the problems more "focused" news sites have, which is the groupthink and insistence that This Is Important.
(There's groupthink on MetaFilter, of course, but the minority voices have a specific place to go and speak their mind. Over the years I've lurked/been a member, I've noticed that the tone of the site get better and better as more heated discussions of what's right and what's wrong have guided MeFi in the right direction.)